Policy Based Quality of Service

1. A method of data communications, comprising: receiving a data packet having classification information; identifying a Quality of Service (QoS) to associate with the data packet based at least in part on the classification information; placing the data packet in a QoS queue corresponding to the associated QoS; and scheduling the data packet to be transmitted with other data packets from the QoS queue at or above a minimum bandwidth allocation corresponding to the associated QoS.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein identifying the QoS based at least in part on the classification information comprises identifying the QoS based at least in part on a source identifier and a destination identifier for the data packet.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein identifying the QoS based at least in part of the classification information comprises identifying the QoS based at least in part on a packet type of the data packet.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising assigning a queue threshold number to the QoS queue; and wherein placing the data packet in the QoS queue further includes adding the data packet to the QoS queue if a number of packets in the QoS queue does not exceed the threshold number.

5. A network device comprising: a receive port to receive a data packet having classification information; a logic circuit to identify a Quality of Service (QoS), to associate with the data packet based at least in part on the classification information, and place the data packet in a QoS queue corresponding to the associated QoS; and a scheduler to dequeue the data packet with other data packets from the QoS queue and allocated at least a minimum bandwidth corresponding to the associated QoS for transmission.

6. The network device of claim 5 , wherein the logic circuit identifies the QoS based at least in part on a source identifier and a destination identifier for the data packet.

7. The network device of claim 5 , wherein the logic circuit identifies the QoS based at least in part on a packet type of the data packet.

8. The network device of claim 5 , further comprising the logic circuit to assign a queue threshold number to the QoS queue, and wherein the logic circuit adds the data packet to the QoS queue if a number of packets in the QoS queue does not exceed the threshold number.